Ecclestone serious on axing Silverstone
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-10-02 13:16

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone dismissed on Friday any chance for Silverstone to stagea race next season.

Ecclestone said that his decision to axe the Silverstone race from next season's schedule would be easily endorsed by the FIA's world council when the sport's world ruling body meets in Paris on Oct. 13.

"They can't ratify anything. I put the calendar together and that's it," Ecclestone was quoted as saying by BBC radio.

"The deadline for contracts to be submitted was September 30 and they (Silverstone) didn't submit. We've got to assume from that they didn't want to have an event."

Silverstone was axed after its owners the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC) failed to reach a deal with Ecclestone on the cost of the right to stage the race.

BRDC had offered to promote the race themselves but would not pay the reported 8.9 million pounds asked by Ecclestone, who controls the commercial rights of the sport.

Ecclestone, a long-time fierce critic of the BRDC, set Thursday evening as the deadline for the BRDC to accept his financial demand, but BRDC would not make any compromise.

"We've gone as far as we can in making cutbacks in other areas to be able to afford the Grand Prix because we feel it is very important for the country as a whole," Stewart said on Thursday.

"The gap between money being asked for and what we can offer iscomparatively small - in single figures of millions - but the amount is unaffordable.

"The British Racing Drivers Club cannot afford the British Grand Prix at any price."

But Ecclestone insisted that he had done his best in a bid to reach a deal with the BRDC, refusing to be blamed for the disappearance of the British Grand Prix for the first time since 1950.

"There's a product here that's for sale," he said. "If I walk into a shop and I don't want to pay what they're asking I can't say it's their greed because I couldn't afford it."

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